In the course of researching something else I noticed that even those who make their saves against dust of sneezing and choking are stunned for 5d4 rounds. Now, that's intended to nuke the poor SOB who finds the cursed item, but in the hands of something immune to poison (like an undead rogue for instance) that could turn an encounter into a real blood bath.
Anybody ever see this in play?
In my homebrew, I am going to make that into a type of bomb. Sort of like the dust mephit's breath weapon.
Dust of Sneezing and Choking and Candle of Invocation are both so busted that they either need to be heavily house ruled (i.e. the DM has to sit down and redesign them) or they need to be banned.
Essentially both items are a bust. If I, as the DM, sit down and design my perfectly level appropriate big end guy I essentially can't take these two items as part of my NPCs equipment even if my NPC can perfectly well afford them. Doing so makes a perfectly level appropriate encounter into a slaughter fest.
With the dust the PCs will all be stunned for an average of 13 rounds and will soon all succumb to the Coup de grace attempts by the BBEGs mooks.
With the candle the perfectly level appropriate BBEG cleric will Gate in a Pit Fiend that will use its mass hold monster (DC 27 will save) followed by quickened fireball. It and the BBEG can then concentrate on any PC that, through some miracle, made the save or wander through the PCs making Coup de Grace (whats the fort save versus a Pit Fiends Coup de Grace? DC 100?).
So yeah - these need to be modified or banned, if the DM uses these the PCs just die and there is basically nothing they can do but all die. All decision making has been taken from their hands.
Whats really confusing me is how these got into 3.5. Did no one notice that these were broken during 3.0?
"Cursed" items never seem to get much attention. They rarely come up, by design or accident. Not sure why. Perhaps they're too disruptive to the game. Perhaps it's because only a tiny little clause in treasure generation mentions the possibility of cursed items; a clause not really linked with the other random rolls you're supposed to make when generating treasure (as an aside- a consolidated, easy to find checklist of all the rolls to make when generating magic items would have been super in the DMG, or even the Magic Item Compendium). Perhaps it's because there are too many situations where these things just completely bust the game if players are ever given access to them and/or aren't big-time roleplayers (in which case, one begins to wonder why they're even still in the DMG at all, but I think "nostalgia" is the proper answer; as the fuss over 4e shows, D&D players are very resistant to change). In any event, I don't find it too surprising that such a relatively obscure section of the DMG didn't get updated properly in the switch to 3.5.
Of course, that doesn't really explain the candle of invocation one bit, now does it?